gmeltdown

It has been said, quite often that there is by far more talk about national paperwork on everything development than actual execution of development agenda in Kenya. Such paperwork will be called national strategy, national policy, national plan of operations, national assessment, national report and everything else national that can be put on paper. Of course developing the paperwork requires consensus building , which in turn requires government officers, bi lateral partners, UN bodies, solution vendors among other stakeholders to deliberate and dine in exotic hotels. The stakeholder meetings will be called workshops, seminars, conferences, trainings, and any other name that represents a group of privileged people who do not normally meet at their routine work places to say the same things over and over again. Needless to say, participants of such meetings also have to draw a handsome allowance to facilitate the temporary displacement from their normal work station. The stak...

This week I have had several chats with some of my learned friends about the Communication (Amendment) Act 2008. I am convinced that there are still major gaps or areas of improvement if we are to have a conducive legal environment for the growth of a knowledge economy. Perhaps the biggest gap is the basic one of awareness among law enforcers, advocates, judges, prosecutors and the public in general. Many of my learned friends are either themselves ignorant of the existence of the law or are simply skeptical that it is not a practical law. Various sections of the law seem simply Utopian to the some of the lawyers. Some lawyers merely dismiss it as a law doomed to automatically contradict other existing laws. With the lawyers themselves skeptical about our cyber-laws the public confidence on economic activity through the web and other electronic platforms is seriously undermined. The communication amendment act having already been passed and signed, there are at least two more bills ou...